Chapter 18
JANUARY
The warm-up area smelled like hairspray and sweat.
I stretched against the barrier while the skater before me took the ice, some kid from Boston who'd peaked at Junior Worlds and never recovered.
His free leg wobbled on the landing of his opening triple, and his shoulders hunched on the step sequence like he was bracing for a blow.
By the forty-second mark, I'd counted six technical errors and a costume malfunction waiting to happen.
The rhinestones on his left shoulder were catching wrong, throwing light into his eyes on the back crossovers.
He'd place fifth, maybe sixth. The judges would give him the benefit of his reputation for another season before they stopped pretending.
His coach was saying something encouraging while his mother cried in the stands.
Natalia appeared at my elbow with my water bottle and the particular expression she wore when she was managing me. "Your father called."
"And?"
"He wanted to remind you about the Meridian meeting tomorrow and to land your quads."
"Groundbreaking advice. I'll write it down."
"I told him you were focused."
"I am focused."
She studied me the way she always did before a competition, looking for cracks. I gave her nothing. That was the deal. She worried, and I performed, and we pretended the worry was unnecessary.
"Red texted," she said, quieter now.
My spine straightened before I could stop it. I rolled my shoulders, stretched my neck, and forced the reaction back down where it belonged. "What did he say?"
"Just good luck. I told him you were warming up."
The Vegas game had been last night. Two assists, plus-two, fourteen minutes of ice time. He'd taken a hit in the third that had made me want to reach through the screen and break someone's arm.
He was still in LA, probably, unless he'd flown out this morning.
"Focus," Natalia said.
"I'm always thinking about something that isn't skating. That's what the skating is for."
She didn't argue. She handed me my guards and stepped back.
The Boston kid finished his program, and the scores came up, respectable but not threatening. I'd been off by one on my prediction. Fifth place.
I pulled off my jacket and handed it to Natalia without looking at her.
The costume was black, always black, but this one had details that read differently on camera.
The neckline dipped lower than the competition standard, and mesh panels at the ribs showed skin when the light hit right.
My father's brand consultants had been specific about what they wanted.
I could be whatever they wanted, as long as they let me skate.
I stepped onto the ice, and the cold hit my lungs, and my mind went quiet.
Twelve thousand people filled the stands.
Cameras tracked every angle while judges sat with their clipboards and careful neutrality.
The one on the far left always underscored my components.
The one in the center had judged my father twenty years ago and still carried whatever grudge that had created.
The technical caller had missed my under-rotation at Skate Canada and would be looking to correct for it today.
None of it mattered once I started moving. I knew their weaknesses now, and I'd skate around them.
I took my opening position at center ice with my arms loose and my chin lifted. The first notes hadn't started yet, but I could already hear the industrial grind of the intro in my head, that mechanical heartbeat I'd chosen because it sounded like the inside of my chest when I couldn't sleep.
The lights dimmed, and twelve thousand people held their breath, and I made them wait. One beat, then two. The tension in the arena pressed against my skin like something physical.
Then the music hit.
The first element was a quad Lutz. I'd been landing it since I was seventeen, muscle memory so deep it lived in my bones, but I sold it like it cost me something.
The entry, the takeoff, four rotations with my arms pulled tight, and then the landing with my free leg extended in a line my father had once called adequate and the judges had been calling exceptional for years.
The crowd roared, and I didn't acknowledge them. That was part of it, too.
The step sequence let my hips roll with the bass line.
The costume helped. The mesh panels caught light when I twisted, and I knew exactly how it read on the arena screens.
I'd practiced in front of mirrors until I knew the angle that made the neckline gape, the movement that pulled fabric tight across my thighs.
The quad flip came next, then a combination spin that let me arch my back in a way that had nothing to do with technique. I held the position a beat longer than necessary and let them look.
Midway through the program, the music dropped to almost nothing, just a heartbeat pulse, and I skated a slow spiral with one hand trailing down my chest. The commentators would talk about artistry, about vulnerability, about how Joel Coffey had finally learned to let the audience in.
Let them think that.
The final jumping pass was a quad toe, triple toe combination. I threw myself into it harder than I needed to and landed clean, then transitioned into the choreographic sequence. The music built toward its peak, and I moved with it, sharp and controlled until the last beat.
On the final note, I looked into the camera and winked.
The arena lost its mind.
I held my ending pose while the noise crescendoed around me, arms extended, chest heaving, sweat dripping down my temples. Stuffed animals rained onto the ice along with flowers and signs with my name on them.
I bowed once, collected a stuffed cat someone had thrown, and skated toward the kiss and cry.
The scores came up while I was still catching my breath.
223.47. A new personal best. High enough to guarantee gold unless someone in the final group pulled off a miracle, and there was no one in the final group capable of miracles. I'd checked.
Natalia hugged me, and the cameras captured it. I smiled the way I was supposed to smile and said the things I was supposed to say. Yes, I was pleased with the performance. Yes, the program had special meaning to me.
All of it was true, and none of it was honest.
I stood to leave the kiss and cry and ran through the mental checklist. Medal ceremony, then press, then handlers who would steer me from obligation to obligation until they'd extracted every usable moment.
My costume was damp with sweat and clinging in ways that would photograph well but made my skin crawl.
Then I saw him.
Section seven, maybe fifteen rows back. That copper hair was impossible to miss under the arena lights, a fixed point in a sea of strangers still on their feet and screaming.
I went still.
The handlers kept moving. Cameras kept flashing. None of it registered because he was here, in my arena, watching me be the version of myself I'd built for everyone else.
He lifted his chin when he caught me looking. No smile. No wave. Just that small acknowledgment, the same way he'd nodded at me across the rink in New Mexico when we were still pretending this was about ice time.
His phone was already in his hand, and he glanced down at it and then back at me, waiting.
I pulled out my own phone and typed fast.
I found Natalia in the crowd and pulled her close enough to speak without being overheard. "Section seven. Red hair. Give him my room key and make sure no one sees you do it."
She didn't ask questions. She just nodded and disappeared.
I turned toward the media area and let them have their champion.
The medal ceremony was forty-three minutes of standing on a podium with gold around my neck while a teenager from Colorado cried about his bronze.
The national anthem played. I put my hand over my heart and stared at the flag and thought about Red in my hotel room, sitting on my bed, waiting for me to finish being famous.
Press took another hour. I answered the same questions I'd answered a hundred times before, delivered by people who thought they were being original. How does it feel to win Nationals? What's your preparation for the Olympics? Can you talk about your program choice?
I gave them answers that were polished and quotable and utterly empty.
One reporter asked about the wink. "It's become quite the moment online already. Was that planned?"
"Everything is planned," I said, and I smiled in a way that made her blush.
Another asked about my love life, whether the program was about anyone specific.
"Art is open to interpretation. I'd hate to limit anyone's imagination."
By the time they released me, it was nearly eleven.
The arena had mostly emptied, and my costume had stiffened where the sweat had dried.
The gold medal was still around my neck, and I could smell myself now that the adrenaline had faded: salt and hairspray and the particular staleness of performing for hours under hot lights.
Natalia found me in the hallway outside the media room.
"He's there," she said quietly. "Went up about two hours ago. I told him to order room service if he got hungry." She studied my face with the look she got when she was deciding whether to say something. "Joel."
"Don't."
"I'm just going to say one thing."
"You're going to say it whether I want you to or not."
"Be careful." She paused. "With both of you."
I knew what she meant. I knew exactly what it meant that Red had chosen this, had entered my world instead of waiting for me to crash into his.
He'd sat in an arena full of strangers and watched me perform and then gone to my hotel room to wait like it was nothing, like he hadn't just shown up in the most public part of my life.
The hotel was attached to the arena by a sky bridge, which meant I didn't have to go outside and didn't have to risk being photographed looking like this.
I walked fast through the empty corridors with my skate bag over my shoulder and the medal bouncing against my chest with every step.
The costume scraped against my skin, and the hairspray was making my scalp itch, and I wanted a shower more than I wanted almost anything.
Almost.
I could have taken the medal off. I didn't.
Room 1247 was at the end of the hall. The do-not-disturb sign was already on the door.
I stood there for a moment with the keycard in my hand.
On the other side of that door, he was waiting.
I swiped the card and went in.